168 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE: 
to descend with precipitation, is a matter beyond my skill. If 
I might be allowed to hazard a supposition, I should imagine 
that those filmy threads, when first shot, might be entangled 
in the rising dew, and so drawn up, spiders and all, by a brisk 
evaporation, into the regions where clouds are formed: and if 
the spiders have a power of coiling and thickening their webs 
in the air, as Dr. Lister says they have, then, when they were 
become heavier than the air, they must fall. 
Every day in fine weather, in autumn chiefly, do I see those 
spiders shooting out their webs and mounting aloft: they will 
go off from your finger if you will take them in your hand. 
Last summer one alighted on my book as I was reading in the 
parlor; and, running to the top of the page, and shooting 
out a web, took its departure from thence. But what I most 
wondered at was, that it went off with considerable velocity in 
a place where no air was stirring; and I am sure that I did 
not assist it with my breath. So that these little crawlers 
seem to have some locomotive power without the use of wings, 
and to move in the air-faster than the air itself. 
LETTER XXIV. 
SELBORNE, Aug. 15th, 1775. 
There is a wonderful spirit of sociality in the brute creation, 
independent of sexual attachment: the congregating of gre- 
garious birds in the winter is a remarkable instance. 
Many horses, though quiet with company, will not stay one 
minute in a field by themselves: the strongest fences cannot 
restrain them. My neighbor’s horse will not only not stay 
by himself abroad, but he will not bear to be left alone in a 
strange stable without discovering the utmost impatience, and 
endeavoring to break the rack and manger with his fore-feet. 
1 Some imperceptible current of air drifted the spider away 
